Software product development is very much driven by two objectives: Short time-to-market and low development costs. However, the current best practice of software development is still expensive, time consuming, and creates unnecessary expenses which often occur in later stages of product development or even after product deployment. One of the reasons is errors or flaws in the software's source code (i.e. software bugs) which are both expensive and time consuming to detect. Finding such software bugs, or in turn giving an insurance of their absence, is therefore of great importance in software development.
One area where it is particularly important to detect bugs early in the development cycle is embedded systems. An embedded system is a special-purpose system in which the computer is completely encapsulated by the device it controls. Unlike a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer, an embedded system performs one or a few pre-defined tasks, usually with very specific requirements. Examples are mobile phones, ATMs, medical devices, and engine controllers. The importance of bug-free software on such devices is given by their often safety or mission-critical application and the enormous costs which a potential recall for a bug fix would entail.
It is characteristic for embedded system software development that several programming languages are used in an intertwined manner. A high level language such as C or C++ is used to program the overall control behaviour of the device, while embedded in the C/C++ code there are often fragments of low level languages, notably assembly, to enable direct access to the device's hardware.
Throughout this specification the word “comprise”, or variations such as “comprises” or “comprising”, will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps, but not the exclusion of any other element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps.
Any discussion of documents, acts, materials, devices, articles or the like which has been included in the present specification is solely for the purpose of providing a context for the present invention. It is not to be taken as an admission that any or all of these matters form part of the prior art base or were common general knowledge in the field relevant to the present invention as it existed before the priority date of each claim of this application.